Monday, September 12, 2016

The dilemma Africa faces

The postcolonial state needs to transform not replicate
existing social arrangements

Lately, I have been thinking about the postcolonial state
inAfrica, and this column reflects these growing thoughts. Why do our states
and their political leaders fail to do the things we expect of them? We need to
stop regurgitating wornout statements that the state inAfrica is dysfunctional
and its leaders are greedy and selfish. Africa has witnessed 278 changes of
governments and their leaders over the last 50 years without any fundamental
change in the governance strategies by successor governments and leaders –
perhaps with the sole exception of post-genocide Rwanda. It would be more
profitable to examine the structural circumstances that make these governance
strategies obdurate.

I love philosophy because, as my uncle Prof. William Banage
used to tell me, it helps one develop a broad perspective. And as Lord
Bolingbrooke said, philosophy is history teaching by example. I learned from
the philosopher-historian Will Durant that you can develop a broad perspective
by studying objects in space (which is the study of science) or by studying
events in time (which is the study of history). History is the laboratory of
human behavior.

So I have been reading 19th and early 20th century history
of Western Europe and North America to find out how they governed themselves
when they had similar social structure as us (rural-urban divide and level of
education of the population) and similar per capita income and per capita
spending as our nations today. Without exception, and with variations in degree
or detail, I find these Western nations and their leaders (were) governed just
like ours are today; through a combination of repression and patronage.

So I have grown increasingly suspicious of the ideological
and institutional foundations of the postcolonial state in Africa. In most
cases it lacks the social infrastructure to govern in the prescribed form i.e.
through an impersonal implication of public policy. It also lacks the technical
skills and financial resources to perform the functions expected of it
(universal access to public goods and services like healthcare, education,
clean water, electricity, roads etc.).

The mismatch between expectations of the state and its
abilities has led to self destructive social frustration. Listen to debates in
traditional and social media. Almost without exception, African elites and
their backers in Western media and academia say the state in Africa is
dysfunctional and its leaders greedy and selfish. I criticise this view with a
lot of humility because for many years I was an articulate advocate of it. But
as a student of Socrates, I learned from this sage that philosophy begins when
one learns to doubt, especially to doubt one’s strongly held beliefs, dogmas,
and axioms.

So I have been rethinking the meaning of our struggle for
independence. We must remember that this struggle was led by people who had
been trained under colonialism. Colonialism claimed it sought to emancipate the
African from superstition, poverty, and backwardness by introducing
Christianity, commerce and “civilization”. Ironically the anticolonial struggle
accepted this “civilizing” vision but argued that the colonial state and its
alien personnel had failed to foster this lofty goal because they were racist.

So the struggle for independence did not seek to dismantle
the colonial state and its underlying ideological and institutional
foundations. Rather it sought to remove alien personnel and replace them with
African elites. These elites claimed to be the best vehicle for colonialism’s
“civilizing” mission. The postcolonial state was, therefore, to be modeled on
the European state – with secular liberalism as the governing model and a state
that could provide impersonally to everyone a wide range of public goods and
services.

This desire to fulfill the colonial vision is today written
in the postcolonial pursuit of “development”, “democracy”, “good governance”,
etc. often funded by foreign aid – both financial and technical. These are
claimed to be universal goals. Essentially the postcolonial African elites are
seeking to make our nations and their people carbon copies of European nations
and peoples. I am eclectic about whether this should be the future of every
country. But I know it is difficult (and rare) to cheat social evolution. The
European future we crave will come – if it comes at all – only after a long lag
and through fits and starts.

Yet I believe that to secure that future (assuming it is
desirable) we need the state to be an agent of such transformation. But the
state in postcolonial Africa has attempted to be so many things to so many
people and in too short a time. This has sapped her energies, hence the rampant
corruption and incompetence. These side effects of over expansion have
de-legitimised state action. Hence attempts by the state to be a transformative
agent also tend to generate political contestations. This makes it difficult to
get anything done.

This de-legitimation although most articulated by African
elites has been given intellectual respectability by Western institutions –
academia, media and diplomacy. I suspect Western scholars have a desire,
perhaps subconscious, to demonise the postcolonial state and its leaders in order
to reduce the guilt they feel about the brutality of their colonial
forefathers. But it also works to justify Western efforts to meddle in our
affairs for their own interests. The African elite are at once a beneficiary
and victim of this meddling.

They benefit when they are in the rough terrain of an
opposition politician promising the impossible. For then, Western media present
such people as victims of corrupt and dictatorial rule. They are victims when
they finally get into power and behave almost like their predecessors. This is
the contradiction President Yoweri Museveni finds himself in after years of
accusing Milton Obote of the very things he is repeating today. Kizza Besigye’s
supporters, like supporters of every African politician have done over the 50
years, believe their man would behave differently. They are deluded and perhaps
they need that to remain positive.

A state that is so de-legitimised cannot be an effective
vehicle for a project of national transformation. On the contrary it becomes
easy prey to foreign meddling.

To be a transformative agent, it needs to make many
mistakes. That is always the cost of innovation. But the governance philosophy
we have inherited from the high priests of development proscribes undertaking
such risks. Thus rather than develop its own project of national
transformation, the postcolonial state tends to keep responding to pressures
from mobilised demand-groups. Consequently, it tends to replicate rather than
transform existing social arrangements.